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L-R gives Athletic Training a graduate program
Four broken bones and two MRIs, and that's a good day for Steph Bennan at the Harlequins Rugby Club.
But for the Lenoir-Rhyne students listening into the lecture, that's a nightmare.
"I think the students understood that he does a lot of acute injury care," said Ashley Long, who accompanied the nine students on the trip. "Whereas that would be one of the worst days for us."
Long, the assistant professor of Healthful Living and Sports Students at Lenoir-Rhyne College, led a group of athletic training majors through London, visiting different physiotherapists at professional sports clubs. And there they learned that the difference between an injury in rugby, cricket and soccer are all similar to the injuries they see while applying care to the Lenoir-Rhyne athletes.
"One of the parts that is important for the students to understand is that injuries are the same in England as they are in the states," Long said. "And a lot of them learned about how to travel internationally. I think they learned how to travel safely."
What's more is that these students didn't do this as a requirement for their majors, instead they toured facilities like that at the Kent County Cricket Club during Spring Break. Other programs also took trips, like Dr. Linda Johanson, professor of nursing, who took a group of her students to Mexico, where they provided medical assistance.
Johanson and Long will be studying the cultural impact the trip made on their students through before-and-after questionnaires; and Long hopes the experience mimics her own undergraduate travel experience, which made her propose the first Athletic Training program abroad.
Long set up the contacts at the rugby, cricket and soccer clubs through a faculty study program in May of last year.
One difference between the athletes the Lenoir-Rhyne group treats and the ones the physiotherapists treat, are their level of time spent in the sport.
"Through talking with the physiotherapists, they did get to see the difference between talking with a college-level athlete and a professional level athlete," she said. "I think the commitment level and the stake they had in their sport (is different)."
Not to mention, Long said, the size difference. She said the rugby players would push 220-250 pounds, but still be very agile.
"It's not just men standing in their place pushing each other. They run, catch a pass, kick," she said. "I was really impressed by that."
She said another part of the travel was to introduce the students to other sports, especially with new sports arriving on the campus with the expansion of the Moretz Sports Complex. In the same light, the students also provided medical service for the Western North Carolina Regional Wrestling Championships at West Lincoln High School.
"Our goal is that when you're a senior, you're immersed into the sport," Long said, about the students spending time outside of class on the athletic fields.
She said another goal of the athletic training department, which treats athletes at L-R, is to develop rapport with the student-athletes, something Long said she values as much or more than just the knowledge of the injury.
"I don't just teach them how to examine an ankle or a knew to see how an ACL (anterior cruciary ligament) is torn," she said. "You have to know what you're doing, and if you don't have rapport with your athletes and they will not come to you on things, then you could have all the knowledge in the books and it isn't helping anybody."
Long said she currently has 14 students in the athletic training program, and the college got approval on Wednesday for a graduate program in athletic training in a 4+1 format, meaning students can get their graduate degree in five years at the school.
The expansion of the Sports Complex will improve on the five sports added in the past four years at the school, which Long said will only benefit the athletic training students further.
"We think it's good because the more variety of the sports the more and new experience and exposure for your students," she said. "If we just had one tennis team, then we really couldn't have 15 athletic training students. To me, it goes hand in hand."
Graduate programs.
Dr. Mike McGee. 4+1.
Bachelor's degree.
Occupational therapy.
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